Lanna Folklife Museum; Chiang Mai Arts & Cultural Centre

I was prevented from visiting any museums yesterday morning because all three recommended ones in Chiang Mai were closed on Tuesdays. To make up for it, this morning, a Wednesday morning, I visited two museums: the Lanna Folklife Museum and the Chiang Mai Arts & Cultural Centre.

They’re small museums, but that’s all I did this morning. Why do you think I didn’t do more? Was it because:

1. I didn’t move quickly this morning and got a late start to the day.
2. I wanted to walk about 10 minutes or so to buy a ticket to something I hoped to do this afternoon. I tried to buy one online. But I couldn’t because they would sell me a ticket online only if I booked for two or more people. I’m one or fewer people.
3. I’m old and can’t push myself from sight to sight the way I used to.
4. All of the above.

If you guessed 4, all of the above, congratulations! You got it right. As your prize, you can read this page for free. That’s also the consolation prize, so don’t feel bad if you got it wrong.

Lanna Folklife Museum

The Lanna Folklife Museum is one of the museums the guidebook I’m using recommends in Chiang Mai. (For some reason, my brain keeps wanting to type “Lanna Folklore,” rather than “Lanna Folklife.” I think I caught and corrected all of the instances where I did that, but if I missed any, please imagine it says “Lanna Folklife Museum.”)

My guidebook calls it “a real gem of a museum” and says, “You’ll leave knowing a little more Lanna than before.” That’s not a high bar to jump over.

Before I came to Chiang Mai, I’d never heard the term Lanna. That changed when I visited Wat Chedi Luang shortly after I arrived in Chiang Mai. My guidebook told me it contains an old Lanna-style wat. When I read that, I looked up “Lanna” and learned that it was a kingdom in what’s now Northern Thailand from the 13th to 18th century that had its capital in Chiang Mai.

But until I visited the Lanna Folklife Museum, that’s all I knew about Lanna history and culture.

The Lanna Folklife Museum is in what used to be a provincial courthouse. The building was built in 1935 and is quite stately and colonial. Its exhibits are spread out over two floors.

The museum has dioramas depicting Lanna life and culture. Its rooms also have lots of panels with text in Thai and English about Lanna history, religion, and daily life.

I did learn stuff about Lanna culture and religion. I can recall it here because I took pictures of some of the text. In fact, I took way more pictures of the text than what I’ve used here. This might surprise you, but there are limits to how much I want to bore my reader(s).

One of the first panels I read at the Lanna Folklife Museum said, “Both religious and superstitious beliefs have had great influence over our lives. Buddhist belief emphasizes the law of karma, suffering, and the cycle of death and rebirth, or round of existence.”

They believe in suffering. Now there’s a philosophy I can get behind. Into every life, tsuris will fall whether you like it or not. I believe that.

The same panel went on to say, “The people of Lanna have been preoccupied with the need to build chapels, sanctuaries and pagodas in order to create the protective environment that will minimize suffering.” I don’t know specifically about the Lanna people, but I can tell you that the broader Buddhist people in Thailand build a lot of temples. I won’t come close to visiting all of the wats in just the two cities in Thailand I’m visiting on this trip, Bangkok and Chiang Mai, let alone the rest of Thailand.

I always assumed that Buddhists believe in one Buddha, the Buddha. However, the Lanna Folklife Museum taught me that Buddhists believe there have been innumerable past Buddhas before the current one. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me because I knew that reincarnation is a tenet of Buddhism. But it did, nevertheless, surprise me.

According to a sign in the Lanna Folklore Museum, there are 28 named previous Buddhas: Tanhangkara, Methangkara, Saranangkara, Tipankara, Konthanya, Mankhala, Sumana, Rewata, Sophita, Anomatassi, Patuma, Narata, Patumattara, Sumetha, Suchata, Piyatassi, Atthatassi, Thammatassi, Sitthattha, Tissa, Phussa, Wipassi, Sikhi, Wessaphu, Kakusantha, Konakamana, Kassapa, and the Buddha of our era, Khotama Buddha.

(Thank goodness Apple Photos does optical character recognition, so I could cut-and-paste that. Otherwise, I’d have to spend the rest of my trip typing all of those names—names that are foreign to me—and have any chance of avoiding typos.)

The Lanna Folklore Museum also displays archaeological finds, musical instruments, decorated fabrics, stained glass, other art, lanterns, stucco Buddha sculptures and reliefs, metal Buddha statues, and murals.

I wasn’t sure if a certain reader would be interested in the technique used by the Lanna people in their mural making, but, in case so, I’ll cut and paste it here.

“Lanna Golden Pattern mural painting features gold patterned leaves on a red background. The artists begin by preparing the wall with rak samuk, the rubbery exudation of a lac trec. After the many layers have dried, the top layer of red wash is added. The gold leaves are then applied to the wall in the places prepared for them and applied with more lac tree rubber solution. In some cases, extra patterning is engraved into the gold surface with a sharp scoping tool.”

Chiang Mai Arts & Cultural Centre

The Chiang Mai Arts & Cultural Centre is across the street and behind a public square from the Lanna Folklife Museum. If you look at the picture I posted here you might recognize the statue in the square in front of the museum. It’s the Three Kings Monument that I took a look at on my first day in Chiang Mai.

Exhibits are in several individual rooms spread over two floors. Visitors flow through the museum in a well-coordinated progression, entering each room at one side, usually exiting at the other, and then crossing a small gap before the next room. For some reason that I can’t figure out, the entrance and exit of each room had curtains over them. I had to pull aside the curtains to enter or exit the room.

The first room showed a video with an exclusively instrumental audio track. It displayed modern-day scenes from the region, along with some folk dancing and craft-making.

As in the Lanna Folklore Museum, there were dioramas (although not as many as in the Lanna Folklore Museum), text panels in Thai and English, and some artifacts.

A few rooms had videos with a narrative audio track. In those rooms, there were two buttons on one of the walls. One was labelled “TH” and the other “EN.” Pressing the “TH” button started the video with German narration. Pressing “EN” started it with Portuguese. No, of course not. It was, obviously, Thai or English.

Fortunately, the museum wasn’t crowded so there weren’t any fights over language. I went into a couple of those rooms when someone had already started the video in that room and they had chosen English both times. I guess tourists make up the bulk of the museum’s visitors.

The history covered by the Chiang Mai Arts & Cultural Centre starts from the pre-Chiang Mai period. Archaeological discoveries found evidence of agricultural activity in the area at least 7,000 years ago and possibly as many as 12,000 years ago. And there’s evidence of Stone Age people living in the vicinity. The history told in the museum then progresses slowly up to modern times.

In addition to the history, the displays speak of the religion, beliefs, and customs past and present in Chiang Mai.

One section displays a mockup of an old Chiang Mai street.

It was another interesting museum and a pleasant and informative morning. I don’t often use the word “pleasant” when talking about a morning filled with museums, so you know they’re good.